


may i see you brightly

by jemmasimmmons



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, disgustingly fluffy and i have no excuse for it, dumb academy ramblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-23
Updated: 2016-04-23
Packaged: 2018-06-04 01:51:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6636142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jemmasimmmons/pseuds/jemmasimmmons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>‘Simmons,’ Fitz interrupts her. ‘What was your question?’</p>
<p>‘My question. Yes, right.’ A pause. ‘What colour dress should I buy?’</p>
<p>In which Jemma goes shopping and Fitz is unwittingly obliged to help her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	may i see you brightly

**Author's Note:**

> I saw this text post on tumblr this morning and I couldn't resist writing a little something for it: http://jeemmasimmons.tumblr.com/post/143268979438
> 
> There is really no excuse for how fluffy this is, other than the fact I am still riding on a high from this weeks episode. None of this has been beta-ed so please forgive any mistakes. The title comes from Sleeping At Last's song 'Brightly'.
> 
> Find me on tumblr @jeemmasimmons.

 

 

When the rhythmic thrumming of the Tardis breaks through Fitz’s sleep on a sunny Saturday morning, he has to wonder whether he’s still dreaming.

It is only when he opens his eyes to see neither a blue police box nor an errant Time Lord standing amongst the debris of his Academy bedroom, that he realises (with more than a little disappointment, it has to be said) that he is in fact wide awake.

And his phone is ringing.

With a groan, Fitz rolls over and reaches for his phone, teetering on top of a pile of textbooks stacked up next to his bed in lieu of a bedside table. Squinting at the caller ID, he can’t stop his heart from making a little jump as he reads her name.

‘Hello?’

‘Fitz!’ Jemma’s voice on the end of the line chirps, and Fitz feels the glow of a summer evening on his skin, the way he always does when he hears her talk.

‘Simmons,’ he greets, and rolls backwards into bed. ‘Look, I think we need a rule.’

‘Really?’ He can practically hear her frown, that little patch of skin between her eyelids creasing up. ‘What kind of rule?’

‘One about how early it’s appropriate to ring the other on a weekend.’

‘Oh, absolutely,’ she readily agrees. ‘I do hate being woken up before my alarm.’

She set an alarm.

For the _weekend_.

_Jesus_.

‘Right.’ Fitz screws his eyes tightly. ‘And when exactly is that…?’

‘Eight thirty. Why, when’s yours?’

Fitz glances across at his alarm clock, which hasn’t actually been set for about six years, and is currently telling him that the time is 12:17 in the afternoon.

‘Uh…it’s exactly that.’

‘Perfect!’ If it were possible to beam at someone down the phone, Jemma did just that. ‘So it’s a rule then; no phone calls before eight thirty.’

Inwardly, Fitz groans.

‘Listen, Fitz, I’m sorry to interrupt your studying,’ at this, Fitz glances across at his pile of unfinished homework which rivals the height of his pile of textbooks and groans inwardly again, ‘but I’m afraid I have a question in urgent need of answering.’

‘Okay.’ Mildly panicked, Fitz slides out from his covers and crawls across the floor towards his homework, pressing the phone tightly to his ear as he tries to sift through the papers. ‘Is it, uh, for the paper on quantum mechanics or the sheet on thermodynamics?’

‘Oh, no!' Jemma assures him. It’s not a homework question.’

‘Oh, thank God.’ Fitz sinks back onto his knees in relief, and then cringes. ‘I mean…um, that is, what, what is your question, then?’

All he receives from the other end of the phone is silence, peppered by a slight hum of voices and the clatter of shoes against a floor. He wonders briefly whether Jemma has forgotten she is on the phone.

‘Simmons? You still there?’

‘Oh!’ Her voice pops back onto the line like the emergence of snowdrops in the spring. ‘Sorry, Fitz. I am listening, I promise. It’s just…I’m shopping, you see.’

‘Shopping. Right.’

‘Yes, shopping. And I just remembered the sweetest yellow dress from the front of the shop that I just had to go back for and I put the phone down in the changing room for just a minute and…’

‘Simmons,’ Fitz interrupts her. ‘What was your question?’

‘My question. Yes, right.’ A pause. ‘What colour dress should I buy?’

Fitz blinks. ‘Dress?’

‘Yes, my dress.’ Jemma waits patiently. ‘For the ball tonight.’

Fitz almost curses aloud; he had completely forgotten about the charity ball the Academy was holding tonight, the ball every cadet whether they were in their first or final year was expected to attend.

Forlornly, he crosses ‘sleep until Monday morning’ off his mental to-do list.

‘Oh. Yeah. The ball.’ Sighing, Fitz rubs the balls of his thumbs into his eyes. ‘And you want me to tell you…’

‘What colour dress I should buy, yes. I have a blue one here, and a lilac, and of course the yellow one…’

Fitz is rather new to having a girl as a best friend and he isn’t exactly sure what he is supposed to do when faced with a question like this, so he starts with opening and closing his mouth a few times while he thinks of a suitable answer.

It seems to be a logical idea.

‘Well, uh, what…what do they look like?’

Almost instantly, he winces as he realises what he has said.

_Oh, bloody hell_.

‘The blue one is floor length,’ Jemma tells him, and he hears a gliding noise which he assumes is the skirt brushing against the floor. ‘It's bejewelled at the front with little diamonds and it has an open back, so I’d presumably need to purchase a specific bra to wear with it.’

‘Hmm.’ Fitz sits back on his bed heavily and tries not to think about bras. ‘Presumably.’

‘Urgh, that will be such a bother. I’ll change into the lilac one now,’ Jemma informs him and, much to his horror, Fitz realises she is about to undress while he is on the phone with her.

_Good grief._

The back of his neck starts to heat up, and he draws the phone away from his ear as if this will help to preserve her dignity any. Jemma, however, seems to have little concern for this, and soon she is cheerily calling him back to the phone.

‘Alright,’ she sings. ‘I’m in the lilac one now.’

‘Mmhmm.’ Fitz pinches the bridge of his nose tightly. ‘And, uh, what’s that one like?’

‘Short.’ There is a pause, and Fitz imagines Jemma tilting her head to one side to consider it in the changing room mirror. ‘Actually, I think it’s too short. It comes to mid-thigh, do you think that’s too short, Fitz?’

‘Oh, yes.’ Fitz lets his flaming cheeks fall forwards into his hands. ‘Much too short.’

‘Right then.’

There is a sigh, followed by a couple of tiny grunts as Jemma wriggles her way out of the (much too) short lilac dress. Gallantly, Fitz pulls the phone away from his ear and tries to whistle nonchalantly, all the while trying desperately not to think about his best friend in a mid-thigh skirt.

_Mother of all things_ …

‘The yellow one,’ Jemma tells him, ‘is my favourite. It’s knee length, with a pretty little sash and small puffed sleeves. But it’s the colour that I like so much, I think. It’s the colour of the sky just a minute before the dawn on a winter’s day. The colour of the sunrise.’

And, just like that, Fitz finds that he is breathless.

‘Listen, Simmons,’ he manages, ‘I don’t know if I’m really the right person for you to be talking to about this. Don’t you have, I don’t know, a female relative you could ring or…’

‘Oh, but they wouldn’t be any help at all.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because,’ Jemma says, a little exasperated, ‘how are they supposed to know what colour your tux is?’

Fitz blinks a couple of times before he realises he is doing an excellent impression of a codfish, and closes his mouth.

‘My tux?’

‘Yes, silly!’ He hears Jemma’s laugh, like tiny bells, down the phone. ‘My dress has to match your tux. See, if I bought the yellow dress, it wouldn’t go with a black tuxedo well at all, they would clash horribly. It would have to be grey, and…’

‘Simmons,’ Fitz asks slowly, his mind ticking over as fast as his heartbeat, ‘since when are we going to the ball together?’

On the other end of the line, there is a silence again, and Fitz is beginning to wonder whether Jemma has returned for another forgotten dress when she speaks again, her voice hesitant and small.

‘Didn’t…didn’t I ask you to go with me?’

‘Uh…’

Scratching the back of his neck, Fitz casts his mind back over the past few days. He and Jemma had discussed their lab work, countless calculation sheets, the emerging robotics market in Japan and the quality of shepherd’s pie in the cafeteria, but as far as he could remember, they had not discussed the prospect of going to the ball together.

And Fitz was pretty sure that was something he would remember.

‘No?’

Jemma is quiet for another moment, and then she sighs.

‘Shit.’

Another pause, during which Fitz can imagine her sinking to the floor to sit with her knees curled up to her chest like a protective barrier.

Jemma sighs again.

‘ _Shit_. Fitz, I’m so, so sorry. I meant to ask you last week during chem lab. I could have sworn that I _did_ ask you, I was thinking so much about it. I suppose I must have thought about it so much I convinced myself I _had_ asked you already.’

She sounds so crestfallen that it makes Fitz’s chest ache, and he’s about to say that she doesn’t need to apologise to him when Jemma speaks again.

‘Look, it doesn’t matter. I just…I just thought it might be nice to…to go together. But, like I said, it doesn’t matter. Forget I called. I’ll see you later, Fitz…’

‘Simmons!’ Fitz breaks in quickly before she can hang up on him. He shifts uncomfortably on his sheets, his free palm rubbing against his leg. ‘I, uh…I never said I didn’t want to go. That I didn’t want to go with you.’

There is a beat, and then Jemma gives a soft ‘oh’.

‘All I meant,’ Fitz continues shakily, ‘is that it would have been quite nice to actually have been asked first…’

‘Right, yes, sorry…’

‘And maybe with a little more warning than the morning before…’

‘But, you see, I _had_ thought that I’d told you already, so…’

‘But other than that…’

‘You can’t really blame me for that part, it was an honest mistake…’

‘I would love,’ Fitz finishes, ‘to go to the ball with you tonight.’

He hears Jemma take a breath, and he can practically feel her shoulders relax through the phone. ‘Thank you, Fitz.’

‘Not a problem,’ he says, and his voice comes out gentler than he had ever thought it could be.

‘I think it looks like we’ve just made another rule ,’ Jemma says sheepishly.

‘Oh, yeah?’ Fitz grins. ‘What’s that then?’

 ‘The next time one of us asks the other out, we’re going to have to be very, _very_ explicit.’

Fitz bursts out laughing. ‘I’ll keep that in mind, Simmons. See you tonight, yeah?’

‘Tonight,’ Jemma agrees. ‘And thank you, Fitz, truly. It’s just…’

‘Just what?’

Jemma sighs again. ‘Well, you never…you never said.’

‘Said what?’

‘What colour dress should I get?’

Slowly, Fitz gets up from his bed and wanders over to his wardrobe. There, he pulls the doors open to reveal his array of brightly patterned shirts and ties and, right at the back, the tuxedo he had worn for his doctorate graduation ceremony, still with iron creases down the sleeves. His tuxedo is decidedly black, and will, apparently, clash horribly with a yellow dress.

He remembers the lightness in Jemma’s voice when she had told him about the yellow dress, and when he closes his eyes all he can see is the image of her standing in front of him dressed in the colour of the sunrise.

‘Jemma?’ he hears himself saying. ‘Buy the yellow dress.’

‘Really?’ She sounds so happy, and it makes Fitz feel like his heart has swelled to twice its usual size. When he thinks about how it was _him_ that made her so happy, he could have sworn it had trebled. ‘Are you sure? But what about…?’

‘Trust me, Jemma, you don’t need to worry about it,’ Fitz says, turning away from his wardrobe to sink down at his desk. He opens his laptop and brings up google. Still with the phone pressed to his ear, he carefully types in his search for grey tuxedo rentals.

‘We’ll match.’

 

 

 

Jemma steps out of the dress shop, a glossy, pink paper bag on her arm. Inside the bag, swathed in too many layers of lavender scented tissue paper, is the yellow dress.

She turns, to make her way to the bus stop to journey back to the Academy, when a flash of colour catches her eye. In the middle of the street, there is a small flower stand, run by a small man in a gillet currently arranging roses into bunches of twelve. Strung between two poles above his head is a string, on which several smaller bunches of brightly coloured flowers are hung.

Nibbling at her bottom lip, Jemma makes a split decision and turns back.

The man in the gillet doesn’t look up as she stands in front of him, so Jemma looks up at the bunches. Up close, she can see that they are corsages and buttonholes, and there are arrangements made of violets, lilies, rosebuds, peonies and forget-me-nots. Their colours and fragrances are so intoxicating that Jemma almost feels dizzy.

Eventually, the man running the stand looks up to her and tips his cap towards her.

‘What can I get you, miss?’

 Wordlessly, Jemma points, towards the last bunch on the string made up entirely of primroses. They are the exact pale yellow as the dress in her bag.

The man unpegs the flowers and places them on his stall, wrapping them carefully up in newspaper before giving them to her.

‘He’s a lucky man,’ he tells her, nodding towards the buttonhole in Jemma’s hand.

Jemma finds herself flushing as she hands over her five dollars for the flowers.

_I think this time I’m the lucky one_.

She says her goodbyes to the flower seller and turns away again, tucking the buttonhole flowers into the reams of tissue paper already in her bag. One of the primroses pokes over the top, showing her the beautiful colour of the sky at sunrise.

It will look wonderful, Jemma thinks with a secret smile and a skip in her step, next to the soft grey of Fitz’s suit.

 

 


End file.
